


Residue

by TheGreatLibraryFangirl (Mazeem)



Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: And Wolfe is seeing a Medica/therapist!, But they are talking!, M/M, Panic Attacks, Paranoia, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Whump, but I think I resolve the tension??, not a lot of comfort in this one, wolfe is not okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27403111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazeem/pseuds/TheGreatLibraryFangirl
Summary: "I’ll be late back tonight. Don’t wait up for me."Wolfe didn’t exactly ‘wait up’ for Nic. He just didn’t go to bed early. He wasn't sleeping well anyway.--Knowing that you're safe and believing it are two very different things. Here are Wolfe and Santi, doing their best after the events of the series to muddle through Wolfe's mental health getting worse before it get better.
Relationships: Niccolo Santi/Christopher Wolfe
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Residue

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty self-indulgent. But who has the brain for anything else in times like these?

**Text of a note sent via Codex to Scholar Christopher Wolfe from Lord Commander Niccolo Santi.**

_I’ll be late back tonight. Don’t wait up for me._

* * *

Wolfe didn’t exactly ‘wait up’. He just didn’t go to bed early. He was unlikely to have done so regardless of Nic sending him the message - he wasn’t sleeping well alone at the moment. 

Wasn’t sleeping well at all, if he was honest. The Medica’s advice that he might start feeling worse as time passed seemed absurd even though it was undeniably occurring. The old bastard was _dead_. Wolfe was _safe_. The Library was reborn - or in the midst of that messy process, anyway.

Ah, well. If there was one maxim that Wolfe was thoroughly familiar with, it was the knowledge that life wasn’t fair. 

After one too many times jerked awake by his chin dropping to his chest, he eventually gave up in the dark early hours of the morning, and crawled into the cold, lonely bed. 

There were shadows on the walls. In his peripheral vision, they seemed to move. Fiddling with the glows to banish them only produced a brightness too intense to sleep under. Typical.

His hand strayed once or twice to his Codex. He could have company in that manner, yes. His father had no functioning circadian rhythm after forty years alone. Thomas and Jess often operated regardless of the time of day. Even Dario … if Nic was so very occupied then there was always a chance Khalila was too, and that meant that Dario would be lying awake too, no doubt. 

He shook his head at himself. He’d felt pity towards Dario, just then, which was merely disguised self-pity. Unacceptable. No. He didn’t want to take up other’s time and make them pity him too, all the while dwelling on the maudlin fact that he wasn’t talking to Nic like he truly wanted to be doing. 

Certainly, nightmares lay in wait for him, but forcing himself to stay awake in this shadowed, creaking house didn’t sound much more appealing. At least the time might pass more quickly with the latter option. 

Of course, now that he’d decided that, sleep eluded him. His eyes were heavy and gritty, but closing them didn’t seem to send any useful signals to any other part of his body. 

Time passed. He tossed and turned, trapping himself in bed-linen and writhing free again and again, trying to ignore the flare of alarm that shook him every time he couldn’t move. 

His mind wouldn’t shut up. When would Nic be home? Why was he away? What was wrong? Stupid scenarios grabbed too much space; Nic was hurt, there was a secret attack on Khalila, Nic was captured and that hadn’t been Nic’s message at all. 

That last thought was so overtly paranoid that he sat up in bed and called himself a few nasty names. Come on. This was pathetic. At this rate whenever Nic came home, Wolfe would be a gibbering wreck. 

A solution popped into his swirling mind. He turned and eyed his bedside cabinet dubiously. Yes, he still had sleeping pills left from his initial recovery period after his release. That felt like overkill, though. Those were for when he went two or three (or four) _days_ without sleep and lost sight of the boundary between reality and nightmares altogether. Not just one dodgy night. 

Still. It would solve the problem. 

But what would Nic think, when he came home? Wolfe was surely just adding more worry to whatever was causing him to stay away.

_What if Nic doesn’t come home?_

“Oh, fuck off,” Wolfe said, aloud, trying to drown out that insidious little whisper. As with all the worst dark-hours-of-the-morning thoughts, there was too much truth in it to discount entirely. So many of the old institution were unaccounted for still. 

Especially-

“Fuck _off_!” He wrenched open the bedside cabinet and rummaged around, knocking things that he didn’t need right now onto the floor. 

Pill bottle obtained. 

He tried to open it, but it fell onto the bedspread. He stared at his hands, which were violently trembling and held crooked, as if his flesh stored memories away from his mind. When had that started? 

This was ridiculous. He was at home. He was _safe_. 

He got the bottle open with the help of his teeth. Pills spilled onto the bed. He had a strong impulse to just sweep them all up into his mouth.

_If one pill works, then more will work even better!_

A stupid thought. Irrational. A child could see the fallacy in that. 

Instead he sat on his hands and let the urgency surge through him in a powerful but quick-dying blaze. Too obviously dangerous and nonsensical to sink any hooks into him this time. 

Good. His Medica would be pleased. 

The _correct_ dosage, _one_ pill, was bitter and foul on his tongue, but the kitchen was a long way away and he managed to swallow it eventually. 

He tidied the rest of the spilled pills (now, wouldn’t that have given Nic a heart attack to come home to?) then lay back and waited for it to take effect. 

Lowering the glows to a level bearable for sleep didn’t cause him the same problems as before, and he found himself more able to take full, comfortable breaths. The decision had shored him up inside. Taking control of a situation usually did. 

When he woke, heart beating nightmare-fast, (don’t think about it, don’t remember it, don’t) there was an utterly disgusting taste in his mouth and his head felt stuffed full of wool. Dawn light was seeping past the curtains. 

Optimistically, even though he could already tell there was no extra weight on the mattress, he swept his arms and legs sideways into Nic’s side. 

Nothing. 

But … 

He frowned and tried to rally his thoughts. That bedspread looked like it had been thrown back. As if Nic had got out of the bed already. 

He couldn’t read the clock on the wall without his glasses, but … 

He checked the light again. Looked like only dawn. Could be later, though. Could be. 

Had Nic come and gone without waking him? The thought flooded him with melancholy. 

just as he sat up and swung his legs around to go to the window and look outside, he thought that he heard a creak from the main room. 

Fear scythed through him, colder and clearer than any thought he’d yet had. 

Had he heard that? Had he? Was it Nic, or was it … not?

He froze where he was on the bed and listened with an intensity that threatened to bring on unpleasant memories. 

Another creak. 

No, there. 

A cough. 

He didn’t consciously think that it sounded like Nic, he just found himself relaxing and letting out a heavy sigh. 

Still, he didn’t call out as he stood up. Too risky, said the tightness in his chest. 

The floor felt soft and his legs felt weak, and putting one hand out to brace himself on the door-frame almost immediately turned into an embarrassing cling. 

But there was Nic. 

It was dark in the unlit room and Wolfe wasn’t wearing his glasses, but the curtains weren’t drawn and he could see well enough for this. 

Sitting at the table, scowling with concentration into his Codex. There was a cup of coffee next to him, but Wolfe suspected from long experience of that look on Nic’s face that it would be stone cold by now. His slightly regulation-overgrown hair told of his concentration too; alternately flicked up or slicked flat depending on which way his hand had swiped.

“Want another cup?” Well, Wolfe tried to say that. The words got a little stuck in his horribly dry throat. He coughed to clear the path, and Nic looked up. 

His scowl relaxed, and Wolfe found a smile spreading across his own face in response. He wished that he could see more clearly. Nic’s eyes crinkled in the most delightful way when he smiled. 

And the slightly fuzzy edge to everyhing didn’t help the uneasy sense of dream-like reality that was tugging at his guts like a hook. 

“I tried not to wake you.” Nic’s stylus moved faster, even as his eyes stayed fixed on Wolfe. Wolfe frowned. That meant his communication was too important to ignore. 

(It also meant it would be utterly illegible. He pitied the poor sod at the other end.)

He shook his head to try and tell Nic to focus on his work. The motion made the world go a little soft around the edges, so he leant more heavily on the door frame.

“Chris? Are you all right?” Nic’s chair screeched backwards against the wooden floor. The noise made Wolfe flinch. His skin prickled. 

“‘M fine. Where did you go? Why were you …” He tried to think of a less aggressive, needy way to phrase that question as Nic’s footsteps came closer. “Are you all right?”

Nic’s arms closed around him, but Wolfe fought past the knee-weakening sense of warm security to demand,

“Are the children all right? I know you probably can’t tell me if-”

“Everyone is fine, my love. Everyone is safe. Hush, come here.” Nic put pressure on Wolfe’s back, and Wolfe put his head on Nic’s shoulder and leaned against him with an embarrassing groan. Nic felt like the only good, solid thing in the world. It was wonderful to hold him, to feel his heart beating. 

_Real, real, real,_ sang a small voice in the back of Wolfe’s mind. Wolfe tried to ignore it. He’d never doubted that, this time. He hadn’t. 

With an effort, he turned his head and said into Nic’s thick stubble, “Are you certain? What about Kha-”

“I am absolutely certain, sweetheart.”

That particular endearment usually meant that Nic thought him completely incapable. (Or very, very close to an orgasm, but that was wishful thinking if ever there were such a thing.) 

That should probably annoy Wolfe. It didn’t, though. 

“Right.” He snuggled further into Nic’s embrace and let the world spin around him in slow, fuzzy circles. 

“Why don’t you go back to bed?” Nic said some time later, planting a kiss on Wolfe’s lips that was almost as soft as his words of Italian. He tasted like coffee. Shitty coffee. High Garda coffee, not Serapeum. Wolfe tried to file that away in his unreliable memory for later deduction. 

Heron only knew what he tasted like. Pill-bitter and unbrushed teeth. How appealing. 

Still. ‘Sweetheart’ _and_ sugared Italian. Nic definitely believed Wolfe to be in a state where only coaxing worked. 

But Wolfe _wasn’t_. It might be nice to give in but he didn’t _want_ to. 

He shook his head. “I’m fine.” He tried to step back, but his traitorous legs faltered, and he only just managed to halt a stumble by grabbing Nic’s undershirt, pulling it so taut that it half-strangled him. 

“Chris!” Immediately he was pulled tight against Nic again.

It was actually a little claustrophobic, this time. He could feel that Nic’s heart was beating faster all of a sudden. Why?

Wolfe mumbled a curse and glared at Nic. He got a wide-eyed stare back in return. Nic’s Codex buzzed with a message and yet his eyes didn’t so much as waver. One of Nic’s hands patted at Wolfe’s cheek, his chest.

It wasn’t worthy of _that_ sort of anxiety, he was only - 

Ah. Realisation poked an uncomfortable needle out of the wool in his mind. He hadn’t told Nic about the sleeping pill, had he? And Wolfe usually only got lightheaded and unsteady when he was hyperventilating, or else acutely low on hydration and sleep. 

“It’s just sleeping pill fog.” He rolled his eyes at Nic, whose face slackened into relief almost immediately. “Get back to work. I’ll make you another coffee.”

Nic stepped back a little, gripping Wolfe firmly by the shoulders, and swept him up and down with an assessing look. “ _Perché_ _avevi_ _bisogno_ _di_ _sonnifero_ _?_ ” Why did you need a sleeping pill?

“Stop that,” Wolfe snapped. Nic blinked and looked startled. Had he even realised he was still speaking Italian? “Yes, it was probably unnecessary, but it did its job.”

Nic still looked wary, but he nodded. With apparent reluctance, he let go of Wolfe. “That explains why you were so deeply asleep when I came in. I thought that was odd.” Greek again, now. 

Wolfe reached for Nic’s hand and tried to tug him back towards the table. “There’s a message waiting for you. I heard it. How long have you been home for, anyway?”

Nic shrugged. “An hour or so?” His eyes flickered to the clock on the wall, but he merely shrugged again. “Didn’t get long in bed.” 

Wolfe started to walk towards the kitchen instead, but Nic brought him to a halt with a sharp tug from the hand that neither of them had let go of. 

“No coffee for you.”

Injured pride and rebellion welled hot and acidic in Wolfe’s chest at Nic’s curt voice, but he shoved it down by staring at the quirk in Nic’s lips. Nic hadn’t meant it as an order. He had just, and this was a good thing, already started to slip back into thoughts of whatever was waiting for him on that Codex. 

Still, he replied, “Yes, _sir_ ,” just to make the point. Nic winced and threw him an apologetic look before finally sitting down at the table again.

Wolfe’s hands were steady now and his legs were … better … but he still didn’t trust himself to do much more than put dried chamomile in his cup and grab the emergency jar of instant dried coffee and prop himself up on the counter while everything steeped, dissolved, whatever. 

Nic might complain, but given that Nic had been known to theorise that the High Garda compound coffee was cut with “cow shit, sawdust and soil,” he would cope. 

Carrying two cups felt beyond his persistent lightheadedness, so he took Nic’s in first. The chair opposite Nic looked particularly appealing. He gave up on the idea of wetting his sticky, dry mouth with his very far away drink, and sank down onto it. His head rested quite comfortably on his folded arms. 

After a few moments, Nic’s warm hand rubbed up his shoulder and the back of his neck. “You’ll regret that position soon, _amore_ _mio_.”

Wolfe sighed and sat up, reluctantly propping his head on his hands instead. His eyes felt gritty and hot again. He bent his neck to trap Nic’s retreating hand against his cheek. 

“Can you not tell me anything, my love?” He sounded plaintive. Ugh. Terrible. Even the question was ridiculous. He knew better than to ask that. He’d known better than that when he was twenty fucking years old, long before Nic’s promotion to captain, let alone commander. 

But there was still a raw, frightened place inside him that wouldn’t settle, so he let the forbidden question hang in the air between them. 

Nic looked up from his Codex, and shifted his trapped hand to caress Wolfe’s cheek. There was a distant, speculative look in his eyes, though his smile was warm.

“There is no personal threat,” he said quietly, as he raised his cup to his mouth. The sound of his swallowing was almost as loud as his voice. He shouldn’t be saying anything at all, but Wolfe wasn’t going to stop him. “There is no immediate wider threat. The Curia have made some arrangements.”

Wolfe’s foggy mind whirled with a cacophony of questions. Did ‘personal’ refer just to himself? Himself and Nic? The children too? Did no immediate threat mean a certain one slightly further into the future? How far? Arrangements had been made? What arrangements? Past Curias had not made very moral ‘arrangements’ in defence of the Library. 

But he bit his tongue and smiled at Nic and said “Thank you,” instead of any of that. 

“Sorry.” Nic leaned forwards and kissed his forehead.

Wolfe snorted, mostly at himself. “I know better and yet I asked anyway. You pander to me too much, as usual.”

Nic frowned. Opened his mouth then closed it again. “We’ll have to think about this another time.”

Wolfe narrowed his eyes. He thought he knew where this was going, and it shook his composure to its roots. “You and Khalila will _not_ change my security clearance just to accommodate my …” He couldn’t think of anything nicer to say than ‘my erratic grasp of sanity,’ so he just waved his hand. Nic could fill in the gap with whatever sanitised phrase he preferred. 

Nic pursed his lips. “We could. You-”

“You could. You would, even. But you _will not_.” Heat splashed over Wolfe’s skin and his skin rose in uncomfortable prickles. His chest tightened. He could all too clearly hear what Nic wasn’t saying. “I _asked_ for that clearance to be removed. I _asked_ for my … my _seconds_ in that role to be kept out of the Library records.” He could still vividly remember the glimmer of the cloth-of-gold robes swaying gently from his hands. Sometimes he dreamt about putting those lightweight, beautiful robes on and woke up unable to move or breathe or think beyond their weight. Like he was bound again. For the good of the Library. “I was never the fucking Archivist.” He stared at the table, away from Nic. His vision was blurry. “Is it passed down in a Curia note somewhere? Christopher Wolfe is useful for what can be squeezed from him before he dies?”

“Chris-”

Wolfe got to his feet and stalked in the direction of the kitchen. Rage seemed to burn through the sleeping pill after-effects - his legs stayed firm and steady this time. 

“ _Chris_ -” Nic’s chair scraped back again, but Wolfe didn’t let his steps falter. No. If this continued, he was going to start saying things designed just to hurt Nic. That was why he walked away. That was their rule; to walk away when arguments started turning _ad hominem_. They could break the rule if they thought the other was in immediate danger, but not otherwise. 

“Do your _fucking_ job!” 

That put Nic back into his chair. Hard, by the sound of it. Good. 

His chamomile tea was just the wrong side of lukewarm, but he drank it anyway. 

Pointless. Chamomile wasn’t going to touch this wildfire. That pretty scrap of cloth in his memory was far too tightly entwined with the knowledge, driven bone-deep, painted in blood, that he stood alone under the rotten gilded gaze of the Curia. An example. An unwilling sacrifice.

It looped in far too neatly with his earlier fears. Nic away. Nic in danger. Because of him? Yes. Deep rut of a thought, born in the darkness. Easy to trip over, to fall back into.

Not safe. Not safe, not safe, _not safe_. 

His hands shook violently, up through his forearms, but he could manage the cup in two hands. Until he couldn’t. Until his legs betrayed him again and left him in a twitching huddle against the cupboards.

Footsteps, distantly, over the frantic rasp of his own breathing. 

Nic.

He didn’t believe it for several seconds. Didn’t trust his senses. Then he smelt that shitty coffee on Nic’s breath again, and that helped push through the impending sense of doom that had wrapped him in its teeth and claws. 

“I’m here,” Nic murmured. He tugged Wolfe to and fro, gently, carefully, and Wolfe gave in and let him do so, ending up shaking and dizzy between Nic’s legs, leaning against his chest, limp and pathetic and helpless and terrified of absolutely nothing.

Heartbeat. Nic’s. Good. 

Nic’s voice, murmuring things. Things like, "I didn't know." Less important than the heartbeat, but still a nice sound. 

_Thud, thud. Thud, thud._

The flood receded after a little while. The moment that Wolfe could feel enough of himself sticking out from its murky waters again, he pushed away from Nic’s embrace. He ached abominably. 

“I’m going to bed,” he announced. 

“Good idea.” Nic’s tone was cautious. His hands, helping Wolfe to stand, were gentle. 

I’m not breakable, Wolfe wanted to snarl, but he had just disproved that very, very clearly. So he just said, “Fuck,” in a grumbly sigh, as he used the kitchen counters to yank himself fully upright. 

Seeing Nic stand and move as if to follow him to the bedroom put his hackles back up again, though. “I don’t need put to bed.” He irritably swiped his hair away from his face. It was damp. Sticking to his forehead. His face was drenched with perspiration. Disgusting. 

Nic sighed behind him. “I’m putting my damn self to bed, Chris, I’ve had about half an hour’s sleep in the last twenty-four and my head feels like an automaton is squeezing it.”

Wolfe looked over his shoulder. It would be quite unlike Nic to feign weakness - and sure enough, he finally saw that tiny twitching muscle next to Nic’s left eye, his tension headache tell. He hadn’t seen it before. Too drugged up, maybe. He always felt strangely clear after panic. Immeasurably fragile, but clear. Like the world was made from glass. 

“Well. Get on with it, then.”

* * *

“We’ll talk about this tomorrow,” Nic said once they were in the bedroom. 

Wolfe cracked open one eye and watched Nic strip his clothes off, and wished that his eyesight was better.

“Talk about what?” he muttered, even as his stomach started to sink again. 

“This.” Nic made one of his expansive Italian hand gestures. 

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Wolfe shut his eyes again and pushed his head emphatically into the soft feather pillow. He was exhausted enough that the world spun. No fit state to even think about any of this.

The mattress dipped as Nic got into bed. “Chris, this can’t-”

“Shut up.” Eyes tightly closed, Wolfe wriggled closer and curled himself around Nic’s back. Arm draped over Nic’s stomach, thighs pressed to the back of Nic’s thighs. Nic’s always warm skin gave him strength to find more words. “You’re not changing any element of your incredibly important role because I’m … less stable than I’d like. Temporarily.”

Nic’s back moved as he heaved a sigh. There, Wolfe thought. Argument stopped.

“You’re more important to me than the High Garda,” Nic said, in a soft, tender voice that Wolfe was _not_ emotionally stable enough for. 

“Oh? You’d leave Khalila vulnerable, would you?” He regretted the words as soon as they dripped, poison-filled, from his mouth. Regretted them ten times more when Nic caught his breath and froze, just for a moment. A lump swelled in Wolfe’s throat as if in sympathy. “Sorry.” He kissed Nic’s back and then pressed his cheek there. A comforting action, but farcical since he was the one to have just stuck a hot poker in Nic’s guilt over Murasaki’s death. “Sorry.”

“Ssh. You think I don’t know by now how hard you fight when you feel cornered?” Nic’s hand found Wolfe’s hand, and dragged it up from its place on Nic’s stomach to kiss it. “Maybe we don’t need to change anything. Maybe you just need to see the Medica more. I don’t know. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” 

Wolfe let out a painful, shuddering sigh and wrapped himself more tightly around Nic. Neither of them could lie for long in this position, but he was going to make the most of it. “Tomorrow.” 


End file.
